


A Kiss A Thimble, A Thimble A Kiss

by define_serenity



Series: Seblaine Week 2020 [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Peter Pan Fusion, Best Friends, Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Growing Up, Growing Up Together, Happy Ending, Kid Fic, M/M, Neverland (Peter Pan), Peter Pan References, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:21:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25504381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/define_serenity/pseuds/define_serenity
Summary: Oftentimes Sebastian will pretend to fall in through his bedroom window, and Blaine will shoot up in bed, calling, “Boy, why are you crying?”“I lost my shadow, Wendy, darling,” Sebastian will answer seamlessly, long before he realizes ‘darling’ is Wendy’s last name and not a term of endearment.They may not have a clan of Lost Boys, but they have a Neverland, an island in their minds where fairies exist, especially if they clap hard enough, where mermaids are a little mean, and pirates get scared of something as simple as a ticking clock.[Peter Pan is Sebastian's hero. So he's Blaine's hero too.]
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Sebastian Smythe
Series: Seblaine Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1847638
Comments: 20
Kudos: 49





	A Kiss A Thimble, A Thimble A Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> Written for **Seblaine Week 2020** , day 2: modern retelling. Inspired by _Peter and Wendy_ by JM Barrie.
> 
> Special thanks to **@anisstaranise** for beta-reading.

“ _All children, except one, grow up_.”

“How?” Sebastian whisper-yells in Blaine’s ear, snuggling closer under the downy duvet, his legs kicking out excitedly.

Fog presses wet and oppressive against the windows, a full moon obscured by a thick cover of clouds; tree branches creak in the wind, casting their long shadows over the house like menacing claws, intent on stealing children’s peaceful sleep — while inside Mrs Anderson keeps the shadows at bay, her voice a defense against wayward nightmares that might have found them during the night.

The two boys in the bed have known each other their entire lives, five years and three quarters to be exact, give or take a day or two, and if it were up to them they’d spend every waking moment together in their make-believe worlds.

“ _They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this.”_

Sebastian hooks his chin over Blaine’s shoulder, hanging on Mrs Anderson’s every word. His mom never read him any bedtime stories, nor does his dad, and he can’t yet make out all the words himself, else he’d read his stories aloud in his empty bedroom; maybe that would make it warmer, like Blaine’s.

“ _One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!_ ’

“ _This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two_.”

About halfway to Neverland, right around the second star, Blaine’s eyes start drooping and Sebastian stifles a sympathetic yawn.

“That’s it for tonight, boys,” Mrs Anderson says softly.

She kisses both boys’ foreheads and turns off the bedside lamp, the room bathed only in the soothing glow of the nightlight plugged in by the door.

As soon as the door clicks shut Sebastian rolls onto his back, wide eyes fixed on the hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars winking at him from the ceiling. “Second to the right,” he says under his breath, recalling the directions Peter gave Wendy and her brothers. Neverland had to be awfully far if they had to fly for days to get there.

Head turning, he watches the rise and fall of his best friend’s breathing. “How do you think he does it?” he asks. “Never grow up?”

Blaine releases a short sigh. “Go t’sleep, S’bashtian,”

But many hours later Sebastian still hasn’t slept a wink, kept awake by thoughts of playing make-believe with Blaine forever. How did Peter Pan do it, never grow up? Was it magic, like fairy dust? Or did he simply think it hard enough?

“Blaine,” he calls in the middle of the night, shaking his friend awake, “ _Blaine_.”

“Hmpf?”

“I can’t sleep.”

Rather than tell him off, Blaine rubs at his eyes until they work properly again, and sits up.

“What do you want to do?” Blaine asks, eyes drawn to the smile that skips across Sebastian’s mouth; he’s only five so he doesn’t know about these kinds of things yet, but his love for Sebastian lived in that smile, perfectly inconspicuous in the right-hand corner.

Both of them slip out of bed, down onto the floor, and take turns making shadow puppets on the wall.

**∞**

Peter Pan becomes Sebastian’s new hero.

So, in turn, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up also becomes Blaine’s hero.

Every time Sebastian sleeps over Mrs Anderson reads from _Peter and Wendy_ , until they’re old enough to read it themselves and that’s when the real adventures begin. A blanket fort becomes their Home Under the Ground, complete with a plant they chop down every so often, just like the Never tree in Peter’s hide-out.

They fashion a hook out of Mrs Anderson’s arts-and-crafts supplies and take turns playing Hook, the crocodile, and Tiger Lily.

For Mermaids’ Lagoon they use the lily pond in Sebastian’s backyard, where Sebastian saves Blaine from pirates intent on making him walk the plank. There, wounded and stranded on Marooners’ Rock, the tide rises and Sebastian sighs, “To die will be an awfully big adventure,” as melodramatically as he possibly can.

Blaine giggles and topples over in the grass, staining his clothes the color of spring.

Oftentimes Sebastian will pretend to fall in through his bedroom window, and Blaine will shoot up in bed, calling, “Boy, why are you crying?”

“I lost my shadow, Wendy, darling,” Sebastian will answer seamlessly, long before he realizes ‘darling’ is Wendy’s last name and not a term of endearment.

They may not have a clan of Lost Boys, but they have a Neverland, an island in their minds where fairies exist, especially if they clap hard enough, where mermaids are a little mean, and pirates get scared of something as simple as a ticking clock.

One night, as they’re laying under the stars out in Blaine’s backyard, theorizing about Neverland’s exact location, they make a pact.

“Promise me we’ll never grow up,” Sebastian whispers, at age five the more romantic of the two. The scent of s’mores lingers in the air and in their mouths, and a star shoots across the sky.

“Never.” Blaine nods, always eager to follow Sebastian’s lead. For now at least he’s as young and wild as Sebastian was, is, and forever might be.

**∞**

“All you need to fly are happy thoughts,” Sebastian calls. “Like puppies or your mom’s chocolate chip cookies!”

Blaine follows Sebastian’s earlier example and opens his arms wide, feet shuffling back and forth on the low brick wall separating their two front lawns. It’s a short jump but there’s a lot at stake. Without strong happy thoughts he’ll never be able to fly, and he can’t have that. Sebastian would be off to Neverland without him and what would he do without his best friend?

Eyes squeezed shut, Blaine digs down for the funniest, most toe-curling, belly-aching, joyful memories — Christmas morning, his parents’ hugs, Sebastian’s laughter

_Sebastian’s smile_

At that thought, Blaine jumps, arms open wide and heart full.

**∞**

“I can give you a kiss, if you like,” Blaine says, perched at the edge of the bed.

Sebastian holds out his hand expectantly.

Mr Smythe told them not a week ago this kind of pretend-play was for children, that their time would be better spent engaging in team sports, that it would make young men out of them and make them learn the value of team spirit. Way they saw it, they’d been a two-boy team for as long as they lived, and would happily continue to do so. Neither of them had any plans to grow up, you see, even if their birthday cakes had read ‘six’, ‘seven,’ and ‘eight’ since they made their pact. Sebastian chalked that up to grown-ups’ lack of imagination.

“ _Surely you know what a kiss is_?” Blaine asks, mouth agape.

Sebastian scoots closer. “ _I shall know when you give it to me_.”

Unable to stifle a smile, Blaine reaches inside his pocket and brings up a thimble, the same he’d used to reattach Sebastian’s shadow.

Sebastian takes it eagerly and places it over his index finger, a few sizes too large.

“Now, shall I give you a kiss?”

Blaine shrugs—“If you please”—and inclines his face toward him.

A second prop drops promptly into the palm of his hand.

Blaine looks down, but rather than finding one of the acorns Sebastian collected on their ride home from school, there’s a silver acorn button on a chain.

“Do you like it?”

When Blaine finds Sebastian’s eyes again, big and green and expectant, a fire licks his belly he doesn’t have the word for.

“Your mom helped me pick it out.”

A kiss? For him?

Mouth running dry, Blaine tries to swallow around the idea, that his love for Sebastian comprised more than happy thoughts that grant him the power to fly, more than friendship that obliterated shadows — an ache both wild and elusive, much like Sebastian, at the tip of his tongue.

“I love it,” Blaine whispers, unclasping the necklace with shaking fingers. “I’ll never take it off.”

**∞**

Blaine lets Sebastian keep his mother’s thimble. For the sake of narrative symmetry.

**∞**

By the time Sebastian’s first growth spurt comes around they realize Peter clearly didn’t stop growing simply by wanting it badly enough. Maybe Peter was the only exception, maybe he’d found a loophole that helped him keep all his baby teeth and kept him from needing fairy dust to fly.

Sebastian shoots up five whole inches in three years and by the time they start high school Sebastian’s taller than most of their classmates.

“Happy thoughts, killer,” Sebastian says, standing at the precipice of their high school experience with the kind of smile that Blaine’s decided is a little magic — his love for Sebastian, hidden in the right-hand corner of that smile, has grown five whole inches too, if not more.

Sebastian throws an arm around Blaine’s shoulders. “This will be a great adventure indeed,” he says, and plants a loud resounding kiss to Blaine’s temple, before disappearing to his first class of the day.

Without Sebastian there, Blaine shrinks a little smaller, a little less confident about this new adventure they’ve embarked on. His body felt to him like a strange husk he had yet to learn to control, while Sebastian seemed at one with his. Sebastian’s growing pains still warped his bones now and then, but his seemed to him a constant conflict inside of him, all doubt and fear and nameless secrets.

Blaine found the word for that fire in his belly; it belonged to the same word cloud as ‘infatuation’, ‘attraction’, ‘romance’, and a whole slew of others, but the one that stood out the most, the one that scared him more than any ticking clock, was _gay_.

He’s not like the other boys.

“Who wants to be like everyone else?” Sebastian will huff indignantly. “I mean”—he casts down his eyes, uncertainty playing around his mouth—“That just sounds boring, doesn’t it?”

Peter would say the same, Blaine thinks, and while Peter may be fictional Blaine appreciates the sentiment. Sameness was for grownups, like desk jobs and waiting in line at the DMV, not for boys who vowed to never grow up.

Still, this new word needed somewhere to drop anchor, for it seemed to Blaine such an altogether faithful part of him he had no other choice but to accept. So he carried it into Neverland with him; if Neverland could be both a lagoon with flamingos flying over it, and a flamingo with lagoons drifting in its sky, it had room for this too.

“We’re not boring,” Sebastian says as an afterthought, though clearly meant as a before-thought.

Blaine blinks. “We?”

Sebastian smiles.

_Sebastian’s smile_

“Yeah, Blaine,” Sebastian says, while the fire in his belly grows wings. “ _We_.”

In that moment, like Wendy, they accept that maybe never growing up can nevertheless include growth spurts, personal growth, and accepting more about yourself — without those extra inches people wouldn’t look right, without high school they wouldn’t learn new words, and without acceptance, well, no one would ever feel right on the inside.

**∞**

Sebastian joins the lacrosse team.

Blaine signs up for Model UN and Student Council.

At Sebastian’s games Blaine’s the loudest most obnoxious person in the crowd, crowing whenever the referee makes a wrong call. It’s a reference only Sebastian understands and it makes all the girls jealous, but that’s okay — Sebastian doesn’t care much for girls.

At Blaine’s debates Sebastian sits in the front row every time, clapping so loud it could resurrect a thousand fairies at once. Even when he loses it’s worth it to see his best friend grumble at his opponent.

“When were you going to tell me?”

Sebastian finds him after his debate against one of the upperclassmen, and not too subtly eyes the boy who’d sat in the front row next to him. A boy from his English Lit class, all blond curls and freckles across his nose and cheeks.

“He’s cute.”

Blaine shies away with a smile. “He’s not my type,” he says, though will admit he found the boy’s attention flattering, much in the same way he enjoyed Sebastian’s attention, and the girls’ jealousy over him receiving that attention more than others.

“And what, pray tell, is Blaine Anderson’s type?”

The ‘you’ lies at the tip of Blaine’s tongue, but he’s learned to keep it there, sewn into the muscles and tendons else it might escape.

“A swash-buckling, pirate-fighting, young debonair, perhaps?” Sebastian asks, and pulls the thimble from his pocket — he’s had it for years and it’s still too big for his finger, but Sebastian carries it around with him everywhere, like a token good-luck charm. At age fifteen, he’s still the more romantic of the two.

“Oh my God, look everybody,” a voice sounds down the hallway. Dave Karofsky. School bully. He had a little bit of Peter in him too.

Flanked by two of his loudmouthed friends, Karofsky quickly has everyone’s attention. “Smythe carries around a thimble. Did your boyfriend give that to you?”

“It was a present, dickweed,” Sebastian answers, and crosses the distance to the bully. “And if you spent as much time looking at the ball as you did my ass coach wouldn’t have benched you.”

Karofsky’s face falls, but his shoulders roll, barely broad enough to contain his anger. “You wanna fight, tough guy?”

Like Peter, neither Sebastian or Karofsky ever backed down from a fight, and two minutes later three teachers have to jump in to pull them off each other. They both get a week of detention but are sent home to lick their wounds.

That’s how Sebastian ends up standing slotted between Blaine’s legs at the Anderson house, the shorter sitting on the kitchen counter dabbing an alcohol-free wipe at the cut over Sebastian’s lip.

Sebastian winces. “So much for swash-buckling and pirate-fighting.”

“At least you still have debonair going for you.”

Sebastian laughs, a wholesome sound at the back of his throat, and sways back and forth between his legs like a skiff bobbing on the water. An inarticulate silence fills the space from Blaine’s heart to Sebastian’s smile, one reserved only for the best of friends, one ticklish and pleasant at the bottom of their stomachs.

His eyes catching on the silver necklace around Blaine’s neck, Sebastian reaches beneath his collar and pulls it free. It’s been there for 7 years, 125 days and 17 hours — it won’t be there forever, but it also won’t be gone forever, and it will never, ever, be forgotten. For now, at least, Blaine’s convinced of its forever place.

“I can’t believe you still wear this,” Sebastian says, as if he hasn’t carried that thimble with him every day of the same 7 years, 125 days and 17 hours, and catches Blaine’s eyes. Sebastian’s are the emerald green of Never tree leaves caught in the morning sun, the glistening shamrock scales of a mermaid’s tale.

“I told you I’d never take it off,” Blaine whispers breathlessly, the air a bit thinner here up high, flying among the stars.

Blaine’s eyes fall to the corner of Sebastian’s mouth, his love curled inconspicuously around one of its corners; he likes it there, all snug and unspoken, an adventure they have yet to go on.

“Blaine, I–” Sebastian stutters.

Rather than let any words get in the way Sebastian tilts his head, inches it forward and—

Blaine reels back, mouth agape. “What are you doing?”

Sebastian laughs the same unaffected wholesome sound. “ _Surely you know what a kiss is_.”

But even though Blaine learned long ago how a real proper kiss worked, like Peter, this was something he couldn’t comprehend. A kiss. A _real_ kiss.

Confusion knits Sebastian’s eyebrows together; he takes a respectful step back.

It’s too fast, Blaine thinks, too soon — he’s fifteen and wild and awkward in his body, he still has so much growing up to do, and he’s not ready for things to grow into– into _this_.

“I’m– I’m sorry,” Blaine sputters, jumping down off the counter, cardigan snagging at one of the door handles; it pops open and shuts again with a loud bang and he stumbles another step back, heart hammering in his chest.

“Blaine,” Sebastian hushes, moving a hand to his shoulder.

Blaine looks up at Sebastian, his best friend, his Peter Pan. His happy thought.

“It’s okay,” Sebastian assures him, and squeezes his shoulder, yet Blaine finds both his feet planted firmly on the ground.

**∞**

Sebastian kisses some other boy.

A few boys, over the years, and Blaine spends many nights alone in his room, or on the couch watching a Scandinavian crime show with his parents, wondering if — if he’d faced his fears would he and Sebastian be boyfriends instead? Would following Sebastian’s lead at all have mitigated the confusion puberty unleashed in him?

Things were so much simpler when all the world was made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.

“Penny for your happy thought,” Sebastian asks at lunch, and slides a literal penny across the table.

Blaine smiles, though his belly aches with nerves rather than joyful memories; he doesn’t feel much like flying today.

“What’s wrong?”

“Just nervous.”

“You’re going to wipe the floor with Cohen-Chang.”

Next to him, Tina Cohen-Chang huffs.

“What’s yours?” Blaine asks, before the rest of his friends get insults thrown at them as well.

“What’s my what?”

“Your happy thought of the day?”

A sly smile skips to a corner of Sebastian’s mouth. “Scandals tonight. You in?”

“Can’t,” Blaine answers, his dejection passing unnoticed. “I have more debate prep.”

For a boy intent on never growing up, Sebastian had learned about fake IDs and underage drinking a lot faster than other boys — maybe because his dad told him he couldn’t be who he wanted to be, and Sebastian never met an absolute statement he didn’t rebel against, or because growing up and maturing were two wildly different things. Either way, Blaine watched from a distance as Sebastian reached stars he didn’t yet have in his line of sight, saw him hurtling down toward the sea at high speed and right before he would strike the water Blaine would be there to stop him from drowning.

The trouble with boys who can fly is that they’re hard to keep track of, or catch up to, and they often lost sight of their shadows. No yarn in the world could keep them tied down in one place for too long.

**∞**

“ _All children, except one, grow up_.”

Lounged back in bed, Blaine traces a finger over the first line of his old edition of _Peter and Wendy_ , the spine worn down to the glue, pages wrinkled and thumbed over, favorite passages highlighted in neon yellow, green, and blue. At some point it stopped behind his edition and became Sebastian’s as well; their names written in crayon on the title page proved as much.

The tree outside his bedroom window, outgrown its place in the backyard, tapped a precocious branch at the glass — he hadn’t told the gardener about it, but rather kept the rebellious branch intact. Trees weren’t meant to be chopped down.

A crack against the window draws his attention away from the book, a second one sends his heart leaping, and a third throws the window all the way open.

Sebastian swings a long leg inside.

It brings back so many memories he almost blurts out ‘Boy, why are you crying?’, but Sebastian hasn’t begged for those games in years, and truthfully Blaine thought they decided they outgrew that kind of pretend-play.

“Sebastian?” Blaine asks. “What the hell are you doing?”

Sebastian snorts, and falls unceremoniously to the floor. “Lost my shadow, Wendy Darling.”

Blaine sighs, “You’re drunk,” and gets up to close the window.

Giggling, Sebastian scrambles upright and grabs at him.

“Hey,” Sebastian calls.

Whatever part of Blaine that decided to kick Sebastian out half a minute ago melts in the wake of long fingers brushing his cheeks, soft hands cupping his face.

Sebastian’s voice softens. “Hey,” it calls again, and when their eyes meet Blaine forgives Sebastian like he has so many times before, wholly, implicitly, like he always will. It had to do with the riddle of Sebastian’s being, his childlike charm and his misleading handle on life — if he could grasp it, sew it back on with thread and needle, what things he could do.

“Can I kiss you?” Sebastian asks, his eyes skipped to his lips.

“What?” Blaine laughs. “No.”

Blaine stumbles a step back, stepping out of Sebastian’s reach.

“I’ve wanted to for so long, Blaine.”

A breath shudders icy cold through Blaine’s lungs, and as he sits down on the bed Sebastian drops to his knees. Breathing deepened, Blaine can’t see anything but a little boy, all his baby teeth intact, asking him to go on an awfully big adventure.

“What do you say, Wendy Darling?” Sebastian asks, fishes the thimble out of his pocket and presses it into the palm of his hand. “You and me, forever.”

A thimble a kiss. A kiss a thimble.

And two lost boys.

It’s a cycle they seem doomed to repeat.

Sebastian’s green eyes are wild with wonder, elusive, set on the far horizon of the next big thing, the next thrill, the next rule to break.

“ _Innocent and gay_ –”

“– _and heartless_?” Blaine provides, tears stinging the corners of his eyes.

Blaine can’t give his acorn button in return, nor can he give Sebastian a real kiss.

His necklace hangs from the lamp on the nightstand, where it’s hung for a while now. He learned what a real kiss entailed, longed for the promise inside it, the real one, not this drunken confession from his best friend, from a boy he’s loved so fiercely for so long he scarcely remembers what not loving him felt like but—

“We’ll never grow up and be together like this forever.”

—for Sebastian growing up meant change and mothers leaving, getting too big to build blanket forts and letting a kiss be nothing more than a thimble, a trifle, not worth remembering come morning.

Maybe Sebastian found Peter’s loophole, because he somehow managed to avoid growing up in favor of being heartless, of finding another boy on the dance floor at Scandals every Friday night, avoiding his responsibilities, breaking his father’s rules knowing full well he wouldn’t be around to punish him.

Blaine loves Sebastian with all his heart, but there’s a reason he stashed that love in the corner of Sebastian’s smile.

For Blaine, growing up meant finding himself. How could he mean anything real to anyone without figuring that out first?

“Sebastian”—Blaine places a hand over Sebastian’s heart, pushing him gently backward—“Not like this.”

Sebastian sits back on his heels, dazed and confused, staring at the thimble in his hand.

Then, as if he hadn’t confessed anything at all, Sebastian shrugs and crawls onto the bed. “Can I crash here?” he asks, their conversation already forgotten. “My stepmom can’t see me like this.”

“Sure,” Blaine answers, and as soon as Sebastian’s head hits the pillow he sinks to the floor and pulls his knees up to his chest.

Blaine stares at his bedroom window.

In all these years he never did figure out how Sebastian managed to climb up to the first floor; Blaine had tried it a few times, of course, but the trellis in his mom’s flower beds couldn’t support his weight, and the drain pipes were too slippery to get a proper hold.

Maybe Sebastian really could fly.

How could he forget that boys who can fly were also prone to flights of fancy.

**∞**

Years pass and the boyhood friends grow, and learn, and accept.

Blaine comes into his own, finds his courage in small places, like the café near school that organizes open mic nights, boxing lessons at the local gym, and volunteering at the animal shelter. In his junior year he’s Vice President to one of the seniors and come his senior year he’s confident enough to run for Senior Class President, building a strong platform of inclusion, adding more art programs, and pleading for a eco-friendlier school.

Sebastian stops growing. He still spends his Friday nights at Scandals, except when Blaine has an open mic night — then he sits front and center, his claps resurrecting fairies. He still breaks the rules, still gets into fights he can’t win, but votes for Blaine in student council whenever his name’s on the ballot, helps him hang campaign posters, and gets all his lacrosse buddies to vote for Blaine too, because his best friend can change this school for the better.

After graduation they leave for New York together; Blaine has his sights set on a college degree, and Sebastian will figure things out along the way. Blaine gets a small shoebox of a place just off-campus, and Sebastian sleeps on the pullout couch, letting his father pay his half of the rent.

Things settle in a homespun routine.

Blaine attends his classes and joins a few clubs.

Sebastian tries out a few classes, parties at night, and sleeps the rest of the day.

Until time, too, forces that to change.

“Hey, do you want to check out this new club tonight?” is the first thing out of Sebastian’s mouth that morning, and Blaine’s head reels. He’d gotten used to having quiet mornings to himself, Sebastian asleep on the couch, the coffee machine sputtering while he ate his cereal and checked his schedule for the day. Now Blaine has to appear semi-interested in what Sebastian’s suggesting without any caffeine running through his veins.

Sebastian lies back on the couch. “It’s called Neverland.”

“I wish I could.”

Blaine grabs a clean bowl and a spoon, a fresh box of cereal and a carton of milk.

“I have three papers to finish by Monday.”

“Oh, come on, killer,” Sebastian whines petulantly. “Live a little.”

Blaine suppresses a sigh. “I can’t, Sebastian.”

Silence falls over the room, and guilt bounces irregularly back and forth through Blaine’s insides; it crosses his mind he’s not being the best friend he can be, but the end of the semester looms right around the corner and he has deadlines to meet, and he intends to give college his all.

The guilt has no sooner tripped through him or Sebastian’s at his back, hooking his chin over his shoulder. Sebastian wraps his arms around him from behind, snuggly and warm in his oversized navy blue hoodie.

“You know what we should do?”

Blaine lets his head fall back and closes his eyes, imagining a Neverland of possibilities; he can help Sebastian decide on a major, or help him find a job. They could have coffee dates on campus in between classes, late night take-out dinners sitting on the floor and watching shitty movies, they could catch Broadway shows or go drinking at a sports bar—

“Forget about college,” Sebastian whispers.

Blaine’s eyes open. Here they go again.

“I’m serious,” Sebastian insists. “Drop out.”

Blaine turns in Sebastian’s arms, winding his arms around the taller’s waist.

“You and me?” Sebastian says, his smile blinding.

_Sebastian’s smile_

“We can do anything we put our minds to.”

There’s something undeniably romantic about it, being unstuck, unattached, undeclared. Second to the right, and straight on ‘till morning. Sebastian’s inherent magnetism drew Blaine in time and again and his love, oh, that corner-of-his-smile love that burned in him...

But it’s opposites that attract, and Blaine has such great big plans, other plans meant to secure his future, and if that means sacrificing a little bit of his now, so be it.

“I need a degree, Sebastian.” Blaine casts down his eyes, grip digging in around Sebastian’s waist. “I can’t just–”

“We’re young, Blaine,” Sebastian says, fingers drawing circles through his curls. “We should be out there seeing the world, not stuck behind a desk writing papers.”

And then Sebastian pulls away from him, like he perhaps should have a while ago, and grabs his phone off the coffee table.

“You always wanted to see Paris, right?” Sebastian points at him. “I can check flights right now.”

“I can’t leave.”

“What are you so afraid of?” Sebastian asks, without looking up from his phone

Blaine shakes his head, “That’s not even–”, knowing full well his best friend will never realize, will never see how he’s not the one who’s scared, of that ticking clock, of time passing and changing things. Blaine likes college, he’s found his place in the world for at least a few years but Sebastian’s been floating like driftwood in amongst the waves for so long, too long.

“I’m not leaving.”

Sebastian looks up with mischief in his eyes, and cocks an eyebrow.

“I’m not,” Blaine says, his decision set in stone. “I worked hard to get into a good school–”

“Because that’s what your parents told you to do,” Sebastian mutters under his breath, and rolls his eyes, a little boy in a man’s body — once upon a time that had its charm, it was easy to get caught up in Sebastian’s wild imagination and go on crazy adventures together, but they couldn’t do that forever.

“–and I’m not going to let you rope me into some hare-brained–”

Both boys talk over each other; their voices fill the cramped apartment with pent up emotions years in the making, denial on Sebastian’s part, resentment on Blaine’s — those two boys staring up at the stars in Blaine’s backyard made a pact neither one could honor. They grew, and learned, and accepted, and now it was time for the next step.

“You’re going to love Paris, Blaine.”

They had to grow up sometime.

“It’s beautiful this time of year.”

Sebastian had to let go sometime.

“Grow up, Sebastian!” Blaine shouts.

Somewhere, a fairy dies.

Mild disdain makes its way into Sebastian’s eyes. “ _Grow up_?” he asks, and it breaks Blaine’s heart in ways only someone who’s lost a friend could know, but he stands firm. If he’s not honest with him now they’ll both be at Peter’s whim forever, slaves to this idea that growing up made villains out of children.

“We’re not kids anymore,” Blaine says, “we can’t keep living in a fairytale. You can’t keep”—his throat closes around the words—“sleeping on the couch hoping someone will hand you all the answers.”

Sebastian glares at him. “You don’t think I want things?”

Blaine thinks Sebastian wants a lot of things, more things than he’s capable of imagining, but his fear of leaving, of getting left behind keeps him tethered to a place he doesn’t really want to be, to a best friend who does want to be here. Sebastian can’t have the things he wants and keep him close too.

It breaks his hearts in ways words can’t describe, but he can’t be Sebastian’s sole happy thought.

“I think you’re lost,” Blaine says, “and I can’t–”

Hands at his hips, a shudder of a breath escapes Blaine. One last snip, one last cut, and they’ll both be free.

“I can’t keep being the one who holds you together.”

Sebastian sniffs, turning his phone over in his hand. “I never asked you to.”

But oh, he never had to.

**∞**

Early afternoon the next day, after his classes of the day are out, Blaine catches Sebastian packing together what little he owns.

Halfway through the door Blaine’s sneakers skid him to an abrupt halt, and he could swear his heart stops beating.

“What are you doing?”

“You were right,” Sebastian says, turning toward him slowly. “I need to stop treating everything like it’s a big joke.”

“Sebastian”—Blaine falls a few steps closer, dropping his book bag to the floor—“that’s not what I meant.”

Years from now Sebastian will thank Blaine for talking sense into him, for now Blaine blames himself for forcing this distance between them. Sebastian’s eyes have always been set on the far horizon, if not the exotic jungles of Neverland, then Paris and Milan, mountainscapes and desert plains, and it’s all out there, his for the taking. It just so happens it’s not Blaine’s.

And that’s okay.

“Still”—Sebastian shrugs—“time to spread my wings.”

Blaine’s lips form around words that won’t come out, confessions he sewed to the tip of his tongue still tethered there. How can he let Sebastian leave for Neverland without him? What will he do without his best friend looking out for him?

“Wh– where are you going?”

A smile curls around Sebastian’s mouth.

_Sebastian’s smile_

“Second to the right.”

Blaine laughs, caught in Sebastian’s charm again. “I’m serious.”

“I don’t know yet,” Sebastian says, “I’ll figure it out,” and throws his bag over his shoulder, “We all have to grow up sometime, right?” before making for the door without another word.

Panic swoops through Blaine’s stomach. “That’s it?” he asks. “You weren’t even going to say goodbye?”

“ _Never say goodbye_ ,” quotes Sebastian, chin falling to his chest, “ _because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting_ ,” but it sounds to Blaine like nothing but a convoluted way of saying ‘no’. Sebastian hadn’t planned on an elaborate goodbye, and if that’s the way he wanted to play it –Peter Pan at his beck and call– two could play that game.

“I can give you a kiss, if you like,” Blaine whispers, voice thick with tears, vision blurred; he swallows down the fear that this will be the last time he sees Sebastian in a long time. You never knew with those Neverland boys; they could fly away and forget their way back. Blaine will have his goodbye, even if he has to take it.

Sebastian turns around, his green eyes watery, like the day his mom left.

In the shared look between them lay every night of shadow puppetry, every bedtime story, every pirate slain, and fairy reborn, eighteen years of the best friendship either one will ever have.

Blaine walks over and rises on his toes, and kisses the right-hand corner of Sebastian’s mouth.

As for Blaine’s love, he leaves it there, or frees Sebastian from it, he’s not sure; either way he sews it to a corner of his own mouth too, a little something wild and elusive to remember Sebastian by, and all the happy thoughts they made together.

Sebastian trembles.

“You’ll call?” Blaine asks softly.

Sebastian nods. “Of course.”

**∞**

Sebastian heads for Europe first. He drinks deep bitter coffee with gin, with Courvoisier, and finally learns why everyone lauds European pastries over American ones. He picks up French and Italian from the locals, and takes night school classes to learn to write them too, all the while soaking up history and art.

Blaine shares his first real kiss with a boy named Elias. His insides have aligned with his outsides and the promise the kiss holds pales to what Sebastian’s might have, but it’s a kiss and it’s real and he’s _ready_.

Sebastian travels through Asia and falls in love with food all over again. A young chef, Asa, teaches him how to cook and how to communicate his feelings and for two years they live together in Tokyo. Asa mans a food stall at Ameyoko Market while he journeys to China and Thailand and the Philippines, grateful to have a place to come home to.

Blaine graduates with honors. No one in the audience crows but he never expected anyone to; that was Sebastian’s thing and Sebastian’s alone and not for anyone else to take.

After he and Asa call it quits, Sebastian leaves for South-America. In Buenos Aires he’s teaching English to children when he meets a French documentary filmmaker, Nathan, who not only reignites his passion for languages, but helps him see the world critically through the lens of a camera. Together they travel the rest of the continent, get high on each other’s bodies, and long after Nathan leaves for France again, Sebastian finds he misses a home, a place to hang his hat up, someone to share his stories with.

Blaine kisses other boys, waits in line at the DMV, teaches English and Music before adding counselling to his schedule too. He subscribes to _Afar_ and _Travel + Leisure_ for the sole reason of seeing them print Sebastian’s pictures, but what he wouldn’t give to hear Sebastian’s stories first hand, to see those green eyes alight with wonderment and delight, if only for a short time.

All that time the boyhood friends keep in touch, through emails, Facebook, and the travel blog Sebastian starts to write somewhere halfway through Italy.

They both get by without Neverland, without blanket forts and bedtime stories; they’ve learned how to visit the past without getting lost in it, without longing for it so hard it hurts.

It’s part of growing up; the hardest one, perhaps.

And they’re both content to let go a little if it means meeting each other halfway at last.

Even still, the island in their minds where fairies exist, mermaids are a little mean, and pirates are scared of ticking clocks, is only a hop, skip, and a jump away.

**∞**

“Penny for your happy thought.”

Ten years after their fateful not-a-goodbye, Blaine would still recognize that voice anywhere; his heart jumps at the sound of it and he turns on his heel a little too fast, head spinning.

“Sebastian,” Blaine breathes, and he’s a little boy again meeting his best friend all over again — a fair bit taller than the first time, more filled out than the last time, and any sharp or angry edges have made way for a tenderness Blaine hopes to explore.

Sebastian smiles wide—“Hey, you”—and it’s all he can do before Blaine falls into his embrace, his arms tight around him and Sebastian buries his face into Blaine’s neck, his curls, breathing in such happy thoughts he almost takes flight.

Fate had already drawn Sebastian halfway home when Blaine more or less begged him to come to their high school reunion, yet they only have eyes for each other.

“Where did you fly in from?”

“Malaysia.”

Unlike Peter, that forgetful Neverland boy, Sebastian has stories of his time away, some Blaine read about on his blog, others so rich in detail he can smell the coffee, taste the pastries, the Kisendon, feel the oppressive heat on his skin, see the turquoise lakes of Patagonia.

Sebastian’s travels have opened up the world to him, opened him up to himself, and who else would he share that with but his best friend?

Heat rises in Blaine’s cheeks. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Sebastian nods. “I– thought I was running, at first. Like my mom.”

A frown creases between Sebastian’s eyebrows.

“But I realized I was running toward myself,” Sebastian says, content to have these words out; as a kid he never said enough and when he did it never came at the right time. Fear could do that.

Blaine’s eyes grow stars in them. “What brought you back?”

At that, Sebastian shies away with a smile.

_Sebastian’s smile_

“My shadow,” Sebastian says, before leaning in and pushing a kiss to Blaine’s temple.

That’s the thing about shadows.

They’re not anything like they are in stories.

They never really leave you.

**∞**

Rain pelts against the living room and bedroom windows in a rhythmic knock as Blaine exits the bathroom, lightning cutting through the sky, and he’s grateful he made it inside before the worst of the storm hit.

Blaine got home twenty minutes ago, after dinner and a movie, then drinks, then a long walk through the park with Sebastian. They both had ten years worth of stories to tell and the past to reminisce about. If the rain hadn’t hit they’d still be talking.

Blaine smiles, readjusting the acorn button necklace around his neck.

Neither of them called it a date, but neither had called it a non-date either — Blaine liked that they were both uncertain because it meant something brewed between them they felt protective of, something special friendship could grow into.

Time had only further anchored his love for Sebastian, and while he carried it inside him now, it wouldn’t be long before he told Sebastian. It was the one certainty he could hold onto.

A knock rattled the front door.

Blaine glances at the clock. 1am.

Robe wrapped tighter around him, Blaine takes a quick look through the peephole, smiling when he finds Sebastian on the other side, soaking wet.

Blaine releases the security chain and opens the door with a, “I’m surprised you didn’t try to climb in through the window.”

“Through the window?” Sebastian’s eyes narrow, while his lips suppress a smile. “I’m not a teenager anymore, killer, my joints–”

“You realized it was locked, didn’t you?”

“A sound strategy”—Sebastian nods—“given the neighborhood you live in.”

Blaine laughs. Even after all these years, Sebastian remained the more romantic of the two, or his desperate nostalgia spun into romance at last, but Blaine loved this side of him nonetheless.

“Why exactly were you going to climb in through my window in the middle of a storm?”

“This,” Sebastian says, and over the index finger of his right hand, finally found its proper fit, he placed Blaine’s thimble.

Blaine’s kiss.

“I actually have my own,” Blaine says unaware, and reaches inside his collar to pull the necklace free, “it’s–” before Sebastian crowds his space.

Blaine blinks.

“My timing has generally not been great with regards to... _us_.” Sebastian laughs nervously. “But I can’t let this night end in you getting away again.”

 _Oh_.

A kiss, Blaine thinks. A real kiss.

Sebastian inches closer and his heart’s in his throat, and Blaine’s been kissed before, but the moment Sebastian’s lips touch Blaine’s it tickles his stomach like it’s the first time, pleasant and wild. Their lips part, Sebastian’s a wet shivering mess but Blaine pulls him into his warmth and deepens the kiss, the promise inside a promise they make each other.

**∞**

“ _As you look at Wendy, you may see her hair becoming white, and her figure little again, for all this happened long ago_.”

Wind whipped around the house in a high-pitched whistle, like sirens trying to lure pirates to their deaths, the moon a thin sliver, like a hook trying to snatch children who can fly right out of the night sky — inside Sebastian keeps the nightmares at bay, his voice quietly lulling the boy pressed to his side to sleep.

“ _Jane is now a common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret; and every spring cleaning time, except when he forgets, Peter comes for Margaret and takes her to the Neverland, where she tells him stories about himself, to which he listens eagerly_.

“ _When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless_.”

“The End,” Sebastian concludes, and closes the book, the delicate creak in the spine telling of its newness. On the title page, like Sebastian and Blaine’s old copy of _Peter and Wendy_ , a name claimed ownership in every color of the rainbow. Tobias Anderson-Smythe.

“Daddy,” Toby whispers, his legs kicking out lazily under the duvet, “what’s your happy thought?”

“Chocolate chip cookies,” Sebastian answers, and reaches down to tickle his son all over his tummy.

The toddler giggles. “Daddy, no-o-o.”

“You are, kiddo.” Sebastian smiles, brushing a hand through his four-year old’s dark curls. “You’re my happy thought.”

“And daddy,” Toby offers.

“You and daddy.” Sebastian nods. “Always.”

Toby hums and turns on his back, eyes greeted by hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars winking at him from the ceiling. Peter Pan seemed to Toby a bit of a meanie, and he agreed wholeheartedly with Wendy when she chose to grow up. Toby can’t wait to be big enough to hold daddy’s cameras, or to learn about all the pretty places he’s been.

Sebastian kisses his son’s forehead. “Sweet dreams, kiddo.”

Soon the room bathes only in the glow of the nightlight plugged in by the door, and Sebastian looks back at the little boy in the bed. A smile curls around the corners of his mouth.

Blaine sidles up to Sebastian just outside the door. “He went down okay?”

“Don’t act like you weren’t listening in on every word.”

Blaine laughs.

_Blaine’s smile_

Sebastian’s love for Blaine lives, as it always had, in every inch of that smile, like it did in that stubborn curl at the nape of his neck, his honey eyes their son’s too, and the dimples at his lower back.

“So you do still know how to fly,” Blaine asks, reaching his arms around his neck, “my swash-buckling debonair?”

“Would you like me to show you, _darling_?” Sebastian murmurs to his lips and they’re both laughing as their shadows on the floor overlap and dance together stumbling backward toward the bedroom.

Yes, Sebastian thinks. To live. To live will be an awfully big adventure.

**\- fin -**

**Author's Note:**

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